Tuesday, October 28, 2008

My crazy morning

What an ABSOLUTLY CRAZY morning!! Let me start from yesterday. My loving, wonderful, incredibly smart and handsome husband is in Dubai at the moment on a business trip. He normally handles any crisis that comes to be in this house. We lost power for about an hour in the early afternoon. I had to read the pull handle on how to manually open the garage door in case the power was not back by the time I had to pick up the boy and our carpool girl. Luckily, it came back on and I did not have to fumble with that! Because the power was off so long, the alarm clock reset. I reset the time AND the first alarm which comes on with the radio. The second I did not touch and that comes on with an alarm sound. This morning, I am woken by the sound of my phone ringing… I look at the clock and HOLY HELL it is 7:18 which means the lady I carpool with is calling because my son is not out there! I don’t even bother with getting my glasses on, throw on yesterdays clothes and RUN down the stairs to let Anne know what happened and to tell her to just go. I RUN back up the stairs to let the boy know we are late and Anne is leaving so I will have to take him to school. He JUMPS out of bed and throws back the blinds to see Anne leave. That kicked him into high gear! I go back to my room and call Kathy and tell her I will pick up her girl instead of Kathy having to drive her here since I will be dropping off my boy at school which is close to her house. She was happy because that would save her some time and energy! I toss a $5 and 2 snacks in the boys backpack and have my girl get on her flip flops since she couldn’t find her slippers. We get into the car and when I get to the end of the neighborhood I realize I forgot my cell phone!!! What is WORSE is I don’t know Kathy’s address since she moves last weekend! UGH I was hoping she would somehow psychically know I didn’t have my phone and didn’t know her address but real life doesn’t work like that. Traffic was horrendous! BUT, I got the boy to school just in time! He might have been marked late but if he was, it was by 3 minutes or less. I call that a WIN, all things considered. I make it to Kathy’s old house and knock on the door. Patrick was probably sleeping and I felt horrible about even thinking of waking him but I didn’t have her cell #... Who the hell knows phone numbers now-a-days?!?! So I left and made it to a strip mall… the same strip mall where we bought the kids’ bikes. I had a plan! I was going to call my husband… in Dubai… OF COURSE! He has Kathy’s #!!! YES!! PERFECT! There was no pay phone BUT there was an officer of the law! I rolled down my window and asked where the nearest pay phone was and he stared at me like I was an alien. Then I told him I left my cell at home and he offered me HIS! How sweet! Then he made a joke “You aren’t calling China or anything, right?” and I said “No, I am actually calling Dubai but it is a local call!” He probably thought I was joking HAHA! So I call the mup… voicemail, naturally. So I try again… voicemail. Third time was a charm and I said “Honey, Sorry this is PJ. I am calling from a police officers cell phone and I need your help. I left my cell at home. Everything is fine but I need you to call Kathy and tell her to meet me at the house. OUR house.” All the while the officer is talking to my girl about the flip flops she has on and how cold it is outside… 40 degrees. I am surprised he didn’t call DEFACS on me!! I had adrenaline in every part of my body at that point so I didn’t really think about what my husband must have been thinking. I thanked the officer and raced (at a snails pace due to the traffic) home to find 2 messages from Kathy. The first was shortly after I left he house to give me her address. Second was “You want me to meet you at YOUR house?” Needless to say, everything and everyone got where it was supposed to today. After talking to my husband a second time, apparently what happened with the alarm was I had it set on alarm A (the radio alarm) and since the power failed, I had to reset the digital radio station. So when the alarm went off, it wasn’t on a station so it made no noise. *sigh* I am glad there are no more trips planned for my husband in the near future. I thought I was a self-sufficient type of girl! Looks like I need my mup more than I realized. COME HOME ALREADY!

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

While the cat's (the cooooool cat, that is) away...

This morning it is raining. I love the rain. It lulls me... However, my beloved is out of town and I am a notoriously horrible at sleeping a decent amount of time when he is away. I have had 4-5 hours of sleep the last 4 nights although last night I actually fell asleep at a decent time, 10:30. But I woke startled at 3:30 and wasn’t able to get back to sleep. Today it was my responsibility to get my son and the girl we carpool with to school. It is also my responsibility to pick them up and today is only a half day. Her mother was recently in a strange accident and has a concussion. One good thing about the next few days is I do not have to cook. Tonight we are going to Jenny’s house for dinner and I am bringing a salad. Tomorrow we are going to a break fast at Dana’s and I am bringing a cheese ball, Bubby’s recipe ;). Finally, Friday we are going to Shabbat at Laura’s and I am bringing a salad and challah. Saturday, I will clean the house for Ed who will be home that evening. Through all of this, I am working on the Shabbat Picnic for my son’s school (should be about 150-200 people). There is a co-host that is helping and should be passing out little candies today as a marketing thing, in the rain…. I am not sure that will happen. It was supposed to happen yesterday but the woman was ill over the weekend and was unable to complete it. I just called the person who was supposedly going to have the vitamin water from Coca-Cola donated and she says she didn’t think we were going to ask for that this year. I was told by the VP over this event that this person was asked over a month ago and I called today to figure out the logistics of how we were going to get the things there. Lo and behold I get told “you cannot expect this 1 week before the event”. Are you serious? There is a saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself”. The reason I give credit to others is because I don’t want to seem like an alpha, responsibility horde. But the more responsibility I give to others, the more I see people drop the ball and kill communication. It doesn’t take a genius to do an event like this. I mean, it isn’t like I am going to run for VP because I can actually pull this off (har har). But if more than one person is involved, it DOES take coordination and communication and I find, to often I might add, that there is a major lack of that in PTAs.

I am tired…. I have 90 minutes before I have to leave to pick up the boy. I need to clean my car, the house, go to the grocery store, do some laundry… forget it… I will do it tomorrow. :P

Monday, October 06, 2008

Festival Funnies

I have been a little busy but I thought I would share something with you all that I thought was hysterical. Saturday, the kids and I went to a local festival. The parking was blocked off and I slowed down to ask the person directing traffic where I should park. He signaled to the parking lot just ahead. I said "Thank you" and drove forward to find a lot that could hold 8 vehicles, naturally full. I circled back and voiced my frustration at the man and my son chimes in from the back seat, "Mommy, why were you yelling at that man?" I replied "Because he frustrated me." He then said so calmly and with such innocence "Well, you don't have to add him to your friends list, mom." Welcome to my web 2.0 family!!!